Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Antonius Block With plenty of legs, lingerie, and even a few smacks on the behind, there is plenty of eye candy 1933-style early on in this movie, and it's clearly pre-Code. Joan Blondell plays an up-and-coming chorus girl with a complicated love life, being secretly married and having male admirers. Her glowering husband, played well in increasingly dark tones by Allen Vincent, is led to believe she has a lover, and leaves her. The notoriety in the press helps fuel her rise to the top, and as years go by, she's famous while he finds himself in debt. The movie then takes on the feel of a drama, with him pressuring her for money, and when he finds out she has a child, he tries to use that as leverage. The movie isn't a work of art or anything (and isn't particularly well preserved compared to others from the time), but it was interesting to see Blondell in a strong role, sexually free and standing up for herself amidst a courtroom barrage that reveals the ever-present double standard. It's worth the 61 minute run time.

mark.waltz Covered in gold coin like attachments on a dress that could have been one of the chorus girl outfits in the "We're in the Money" production number in "Gold Diggers of 1933", glamorous Joan Blondell is definitely looking to make off of the bread and chorus lines and onto the social register on this delightful pre-code drama. Fellow gold digger Ginger Rogers is along for the ride, and they aren't taking any prisoners.Perhaps they are just tired of the stage door Johnny's taking advantage of them, but in Blondell's case, she is hiding a divorce and a child, and this infuriates both the ex and the current. Rogers is fine support as a character named Flip, while Ricardo Cortez is pleasant as the man Blondell might reform over. This is pre-code drama at its best, mild on wisecracks but clever enough to be original.

gridoon2018 "Broadway Bad" begins as a distinctly pre-code, "naughty" comedy (there are lots of scenes with chorus girls (including the leads) in their underwear in the opening 15 minutes), then it turns into a more or less straight drama. The story has some unexpected twists, and director Sidney Lanfield devises some ingenious scene transitions, and even a POV camera shot at one point. Joan Blondell gets to play both the good and the bad girl, and she does both well. Ginger Rogers has a relatively small role, but she does get one of the best lines in the film: "One more crack like that, and your neck will probably get tangled up in my fingers!". Adrienne Ames is very good as an embittered chorus girl (she used to be the sponsor's favorite, but now his attentions have turned to Blondell), and she has one of the film's most provocative lines: "Soft lights, soft music, soft pillows". What you should not expect to see in this film, despite the word "Broadway" in the title, are any kind of musical production numbers. **1/2 out of 4.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre I saw 'Broadway Bad' in May of this year, at the Cinevent festival in Columbus, Ohio. If I hadn't been attending the festival anyway, I would never have bothered to see this movie, as it stars an actress whom I loathe: Joan Blondell. Always cheap, vulgar, squawk-voiced and unattractive, Blondell is in her usual mode here. She manages to look a bit different this time round, but only because this movie was made at Fox (Blondell's usual studio was Warners) ... so the lighting, costumes, hairstyles and general ambiance are a change of pace for her. The storyline - concerned with morals, reputations and sexual hypocrisy - is something more typical of Warners than of Fox.Blondell plays a chorus girl named Tony. (Is that short for Anthony?) In the 1930s, chorus girls were generally perceived to be of low virtue (and some of them certainly did fit that description), but we're given to understand that Tony is a good girl for all her brassy behaviour. She gets a proposition from playboy Craig, who is wealthy in his own right, but she turns him down to marry Bob, who's even wealthier but only because he's the scion of a prominent family.Apparently, Tony is genuinely in love with Bob (rather than gold-digging his folks' money), yet she remains friendly with Craig. When Bob catches Tony with Craig once too often, he divorces her. In order to obtain the divorce, Bob's father's lawyers ruin Tony's reputation.As she's now been branded as a bad girl, Tony decides to cash in on it. She straight away becomes a Broadway star by trading in on the public perception that she's a slut. (Oh, so that's how it works!)I forgot to tell you about the baby ... I mean, the scriptwriters forgot to tell you about the baby. All through this argle-bargle, Tony has secretly had a baby. Apparently she was with some other man before Craig and Bob. We never do find out who this man was, nor the precise nature of Tony's relationship with him - were they married? is he dead? - nor anything that would enable us to decide how much of our sympathy Tony deserves.Bob's rich parents find out about the baby, and they assume that Bob is the father. They sue Tony to acquire custody of the child. The courtroom scenes degenerate into soap opera. Expect some big revelations that you really won't care about.Ginger Rogers is quite good as Tony's friend, a chorus girl named Flip Daily. (She must be an acrobat.) I would rather have seen this movie with Ginger Rogers in the lead, as she was vastly more talented than Blondell and certainly easier on the eyes and the eardrums than Blondell ever was. I'll rate 'Broadway Bad' 4 out of 10, mostly for its proficient photography and efficient direction by the underrated Sidney Lanfield. There are some good supporting performances. Rogers is excellent, as is Ricardo Cortez as the semi-caddish Craig. (Over the course of his career, Cortez made an interesting and graceful transition from shiekish leading man to cynical hero to amoral cad to outright villain: at this point, he was in his early cad phase.) Joan Blondell, as usual, stinks. The lighting on the Fox sound stages doesn't conceal Blondell's facial moles as well as the lighting at Warners did.